The Past is Prologue

While rummaging through my writer’s journal for this year I came across the following. I didn’t post it at the time as it, uh, may have been a little too close to how I was feeling in April. Probably not that far from how I feel now as well. But I like a lot of what I wrote so here it is, another chapter in the ongoing saga of Brian and Richard, with some edits made along the way…

Brian: I’ve been thinking about reincarnation a lot recently.
Richard: That’s unusual, I always figured that your mind consisted solely of celebrity gossip.
B: Most of the time, yeah, but a few days ago I really started to think about reincarnation. It’s not something that I had ever sat down and pondered before but I’ve decided that I really hope that I get to be reincarnated.
R: Why?
B: Well, the way that I look at it I would really like to give my life another try. I figure that if I got a chance to start over I’d avoid the mistakes this time and everything would be better.
R: So you want to give life another chance?
B: Absolutely. I mean, I look at the state that I’m in and it’s like, “Wow, I really screwed this one up. Can I get a do-over?” You know, just let me hit the reset button on the Atari console of life and I bet that next time around everything will go right.
(Richard punches Brian hard in the arm.)
B: What the hell was that for?
R: How long have you known me?
B: Long enough to know that you don’t hit me unless I deserve it.
R: And you do deserve it. That is the dumbest and most depressing thing that I’ve ever heard come out of your mouth.
B: Why? Just because I suddenly started thinking like a Buddhist?
R: No, it’s because all you are doing is continuing to whine about your life except that now you get to wrap it up in a nice little spiritual bow. If you want to start your life over don’t wait until you die, start right now.
B: Look, I do not whine about my life. I’m just really practical in my view of the world and I tell it like it is.
R: Uh, no you do whine. You complain about your job, you complain about where you live, you complain about your social life and for all of that complaining you never seem to do anything about it.
B: You keep on acting like it is my fault that my life doesn’t measure up to my own expectations?
R: It’s entirely your fault. None of your expectations are based on reality. Your life is tied more to the fantasy of what it should be than what it could be. And you’re in love with that idea. If you had your way, a girl you met when you were sixteen would walk right through that door, recognize you and fall madly in love with you and you would live happily ever after.
B: And that would be awesome. It would be like living a movie.
R: Right, because a movie is fiction. In the history of the world that chain of events has never happened and you certainly aren’t going to be the first. She’s moved on Brian. She almost certainly doesn’t remember a guy she met half a lifetime ago. I can guarantee you that she is not thinking about you right now, she’s not hoping to run into you, she’s not googling your name to try to find you. But you still view everything in life through that lens of perfect romance and rainbows and pink unicorns and when things don’t match up with your pretty picture you sit around and mope.
B: Ok hotshot, what should I do? I’m sitting here in a coffee shop with a life that doesn’t in any way match up with what I thought it would be. Despite what everyone else would say, I don’t feel successful. Sure, I have a nice job but it doesn’t get me any closer to a state of grace at the end of the day.
R: State of grace?
B: Yeah, when you date a theologian phrases like that suddenly enter your lexicon. But anyway, I know that on the surface everything in my life is perfect. And it is, given the other possibilities I really shouldn’t complain about what I have. But it doesn’t fulfill me, it doesn’t make me happy and I’ve been getting this sinking feeling over the past few weeks that my life is just going to be stuck like this.
R: Remember when Fitzgerald said that there are no second acts in American lives?
B: Yeah, what about it?
R: Everyone misinterprets it. They take it to mean that no one can age gracefully, that it’s all glory and ruin. But it doesn’t mean that at all. The reason that there are no second acts is because the past is always prologue. You can always start over. You can always recreate yourself. Brian, don’t wait for fate to decide your path. If you want to get reincarnated as a three toed sloth go right ahead but don’t wait for that to make you happy. Walk out the door and take action. I don’t care what, jump up and down and scream if you feel like it. But you’ve got to stop pondering and start acting. It’s the only way.

You're a mean one, Mr. EC...

Another weekend in the books, another weekend to write about…

1) Ever have one of those weekends where you just don’t feel like doing anything at all? Like going out and being social is the biggest hassle in the world? That’s kind of how I was this weekend and it isn’t a good sign. I can kind of feel myself getting into one of my moods where I bounce between self-loathing and really, really loathing myself. I could blame the fact that we are at the nadir of sunlight but given that I’m being short with people who really don’t deserve it I shouldn’t make excuses. I know, good old EC being the Grinch during the holiday season once more…

2) I think I write about this every year but it just never feels like the holidays for me out here in KC. It could be because my apartment contains no Christmas decorations. (One year I did go out and buy a little tree from Target but when I looked at it I could see Charlie Brown staring at it and going, “Dude, even I wouldn’t buy that one.”) But really I think it’s just the weather in this town doesn’t correspond to my memories of the holidays. It was sixty here over the weekend so instead of snow and getting to see your breath all you saw were leafless trees and dormant grass. Sure the Plaza lights are pretty but it just isn’t Christmas to me. Snow is an important part of the season and it just seems to be missing out here.

3) Switching gears a bit, I finally listened to the latest Liz Phair CD last week despite the fact that I think I’ve owned it for a year. I literally bought it, put it in the collection and never thought about it again until the random number generator chose it. In listening to it I was pleasantly surprised because it is not a horrible album. In fact, you could say that Liz is evolving as an artist. Sadly, she is evolving into Sheryl Crow and I don’t think we need another one of her. It is a tame, tuneful album and you can’t say that about Exile in Guyville, which is probably why that album will be remembered forever while no one actually bought Somebody’s Miracle.

4) In celebrity news, they’ve dropped the charges against Natasha Lyonne, a favorite actress of mine before she went completely insane. Ok, maybe not insane but she was charged with, and I quote, “Threatening to molest her neighbor’s dog.” Personally, I want to know which politician decided years ago to put that statute on the books. You know, sat down one night and looked at all of the laws and went, “Hey were missing one about molesting your neighbor’s pet. Think we can add that this to the list.” Probably would have made the Bill of Rights except that it would have been the eleventh amendment and they didn’t want an odd number.

5) I’ve got to give a shout out to Family Guy for breaking out the Garrett Morris’ President of the School for the Hard of Hearing bit tonight. It’s an ancient Saturday Night Live bit but it’s one of the funniest ever and so completely unexpected. That said, I bet Garrett would have come in handy in many of the breakups that I’ve endured over the years.

6) Finally decided that I’ll be good and read Richard II this year. Two reasons why. First, it is a page shorter. Second, in the book of Shakespeare I borrowed (or more accurately, stole) from my mom she has class notes and underlined passages for this play. So it’s cool for me to read and I have built in Cliff Notes.

The five random CDs for the week
1) Jimmy LaFave “Texoma”
2) R.E.M. “Document”
3) Victoria Williams “Loose”
4) The Connells “Ring”
5) Cowboy Junkies “Open Road”

Very Infrequently Asked Questions...

If it’s late on a Thursday then it must be time for some more Infrequently Asked Questions…

Question: How in the world have you gone this long without talking about the return of the McRib?

Answer: I know, I’m stunned as well. Especially given that the commercials for it indicate that this is on par with the Beatles getting back together with incredible press coverage and lines going out the door. All this for a sandwich featuring a meat like product slathered in something that is not technically ketchup but not quite motor oil. While you know going in that there is no part of a chicken that is technically a McNugget at least you could conceive of how they would be made. The McRib goes beyond this by seemingly being the product of some mutant animal that is roaming the plains of Idaho. That said, given that you can’t eat the lettuce at Taco Bell (now leaving them with only four ingredients) completely processed food might not be such a bad idea.

Question: So what is this about expanding the blog empire?

Answer: I still haven’t done my due diligence here (busy as hell this week) but earlier this week I got an email from someone inviting me to be a contributor to their blog. The good news is that I’m pretty sure that I’ve heard of this site so it might very well be legit. The bad news is that it is an NBA blog and I was chosen due to my interest in the NBA. Which, unless Lindsay Lohan suddenly became the starting point guard for the Knicks, doesn’t seem to match up with what this blog is about. Sure, I write about sports all the time and will talk about basketball from mainly an Illinois/Duke perspective but I can’t see that this would make me stand out amongst the blogsphere. Still, who knows, maybe I can figure out a way to make it work.

Question: Wait a minute, the blog is supposed to be about something?

Answer: Technically there is a purpose to all of this. Several purposes actually, many of which have appeared over the past two years. It’s always been my goal to have this site be a music review site, though I’ve lessened that as I’ve discovered that a) I have a hard time writing music reviews that don’t solely consist of “This is awesome” and b) people tend to want to read about bands that they may actually have heard of. It’s also meant to be a pop culture warehouse, which it is successful in being.

But while I didn’t think this was the overall goal two years ago I think that this really has become a case of my documenting my life. I know that sounds strange or at least self-centered but it is rather cool to know that I have two years of my life detailed in these pages. Given that I still consider myself to be on a journey to determine just who I truly am and I constantly fight the battle between being an adult and retaining my youthful idealism, I think it is a rather good time to capture these thoughts.

I still am fighting over what belongs in the blog and what doesn’t. There is one story I am working on that I’ve decided is to personal for the blog but will be fine for my memoir/short story collection. Which means that I feel weird posting it but wouldn’t have a second thought about forcing people to pay to read it. And I kind of feel like that is silly. I still won’t write about work but I’m thinking that I might relax some of my criteria in the coming months.

That’s it for tonight. Finish up your Christmas shopping this weekend.

Catching up...

Lots of things to cover tonight…

1) Sorry for the lack of a post last night. I was out in Seattle for work this week and couldn’t find time to sit down and write, especially after spending what was effectively fourteen straight hours in meetings. The absolutely awful Monday post, which may or may not have been technically written in English, I’m going to blame equally on jet lag and the fact that it is very difficult for me to write from a hotel room. Somehow I just don’t feel like I’ll ever be one of those travelogue writers, though it is probably my dream gig.

2) What’s Seattle like this time of year? It’s rainy and gray and really, really windy. And for some reason, every single person in the town looks like they are really, really cool. It’s not even like they are trying that hard. They’re just walking around wearing North Face gear and thinking all day, “Wow, I am so awesome.” It’s a town I really need to hang out in.

3) I did have this thought hit me during the trip, I really believe that the only people who actually read USA Today are people who are staying at hotels. Does anyone rush over to the newsstand because they just have to have their copy? It’s not really news, it’s more like a printed version of the headline crawl on CNN. I don’t even think anyone in the hotel reads it, they just glance at the tv listings and toss it in the trash. Hell, you could probably save a ton of money by just reusing the same paper day after day. Most people probably wouldn’t even notice it.

4) Here is the absolute best advertisement that I’ve seen over the past couple of days. This year marks the twenty fifth anniversary of the Chia Pet. And, if you purchase the original version of the pottery that grows you will receive, at no additional charge, a lifesize Chia doll. Let’s examine this in detail, shall we? First of all, how in the world did Chia Pets survive in the market for twenty-five years? It’s gone from being interesting to bad to camp back to interesting to camp to bad during that time frame and yet people still walk into a Walgreens to buy them as gifts for people they don’t particularly like. At this point, it’s basically just a fruitcake that grows. Now, they are giving away toys with it and I want to know for whom does that just puts the deal over the top. “I don’t know Jethro, unless it came with a fifty cent piece of cotton I don’t know if it’s worth it.” And you can only get it with the original version, if you get the Garfield one you are out of luck. I’m telling you, every once in a while I feel that you just have to agree with the statement that no one has ever gone bankrupt by underestimating the intelligence of the American consumer.

5) On Sunday night I had a dream that I was a contestant in The Amazing Race. Add this to my dream of being in the cast of How I Met Your Mother I am now getting the sinking feeling that my subconscious has now become a CBS affiliate. I’m hoping this means more appearances of Jennifer Love Hewitt in my dreams as opposed to a more old school approach where I’m stuck reliving Diagnosis: Murder and Murder She Wrote night after night.

6) Still have to check this out but I had an email recently that offered me the opportunity to significantly expand the reach of the Battling the Current empire. Not sure if this is legit or not or whether it is the right deal for me but it might be an interesting development. Stay tuned.

The internet for a horse

So, my friends at Deadspin have gotten themselves in a bit of an online turf war that I need to mention. See, for months one of the running jokes has been examining the messages posted to the "Get Well Barbaro" board and a) critiquing the need to write messages to a horse and b) post their own messages of varying degrees of taste in an effort to get them past the poor soul whose job it is to read what middle aged women write to a horse. As you can expect, this can only end poorly.

I'm not kidding about the Barbaro message board. For over six months now, people have been pouring out their heart and soul in sending their positive energies to the healing of a horse. In one sense, this is a very noble and kind thing to do. On the other hand, it is the most sad and bizarre act I've seen on the internet and that is saying something. First of all, Barbaro doesn't know how to read. If he did, then I would be all for doing everything possible to save his life. I mean, we were all very protective of Mr. Ed and I see no difference in this case. Second, the entire reason this extreme effort has been put forth to save Barbaro's life has nothing (or at least very little) to do with the love for the horse. It is more about making it possible for him to start knocking hooves with some other mares and earn his keep. And finally, what about Bernadini, who actually won the Preakness and gets no respect whatsoever?

Obviously, this gives my friends at Deadspin ample amounts of ammunition to attack the board in their usual manner of ascerbic wit, Chris Berman references, and questioning where was Mamula in all of this. So we now have a war between the heartfelt middle aged matriarchs and the darkly cynical sports fans. My money is on the cynical because you should never start a fight with people who feel that having nothing left to lose is a birthright. Also, they're at least trying to be funny while the people writing "Grow Hoof Grow" are hilarious in a more meta sense.

What does this all mean in the end? People can get really uptight about the feelings of an animal that cost me on a ten dollar trifecta.

(Oh, and the pointy headed Jedi actually has a name? I really need to read up on my expanded universe before I get laughed out of the next ComicCon.)

Now officially on the late shift...

Bartenders have greeted me in a number of different ways over the years as I’ve stumbled into their establishments. I’ve had my share of “Norm!” and “Good to see ya” and “(Nod of recognition as I slide your beer over to you)”. Last night was a first though as I walked into my regular watering hole and the bartender goes “You’re late. Where have you been?” This means that I’ve moved beyond being a regular and now apparently have regular working hours at the place. As in my presence is required as part of the décor. As always, my life always straddles the border of being incredibly awesome and really, really disturbing.

Tough to say if I actually accomplished anything over the weekend. My apartment is slightly cleaner in that I purged some of my magazine collection and decided to pick the majority of the clothes off the floor. It actually isn’t that bad, it’s just that when I have a week like the last one that turns out to be incredibly busy I end the week with a coffee table filled with unread mail and a sink overflowing with dishes that I hope will clean themselves through their exposure to the air. I did get some more Christmas shopping done, which I performed using my usual technique of going to stores that have the least number of cars in the parking lot so I won’t have to deal with crowds. I know some people enjoy the hustle and bustle of the crowds but I would just rather be able to walk through a store without running into people who have stopped in the middle of an aisleway because apparently they had never seen a Christmas tree before.

I did have the oddest dream imaginable over the weekend. I dreamt that I was in the cast of How I Met Your Mother. That’s pretty meta given that I was dreaming about being in a show that is about my life already. It was very strange in that in the dream I was literally hanging out with Marshall, Ted and Lilly (the actors, not the characters) at an award show and talking about the show. It was realistic and in a sense, normal. Like it wasn’t like a dream at all. It was as if I really was spending my life hanging around with Allison Hannigan all day, which would totally rock. It was rather confusing once I woke up as I had to question reality for a good long time as to whether I had dreamt about a tv show, my own life, my own life as a tv show or all of the above. Along with trying to figure out what I meant when I told the guy “So what is it like playing me?”

Maybe I should put that DVD collection to the side for a little while. I tend to have a tenuous grip on reality to begin with.

The five random CDs for the week:
1) Pat McGee Band “Shine”
2) Tori Amos “To Venus and Back”
3) Josh Ritter “The Golden Age of Radio”
4) Old 97’s “Wreck Your Life”
5) Liz Phair “Somebody’s Miracle”

Hillary and Haylie Duff = Jango and Boba Fett?

Lisa was right in her comment earlier this week, my comparison between Paris Hilton and Yoda is flawed. It was an attempt at making a Star Wars reference that didn’t go over everyone’s head and therefore wasn’t the proper analogy. Here is a better one.

In the fabled Brittney paparazzi pictures you have Paris looking on with the exact same look on her face that Emperor Palpatine has when Anakin surrenders to the dark side. That makes Brittney Anakin and my beloved Lindsay a much more believable Mace Windu (who had the dark lord defeated until Anakin joined the fight). I guess that makes K-Fed equivalent to Padme, which makes sense as neither of them have a line of believable dialogue. Yoda would be Madonna, Obi-Wan would be Christina Aguilera, that Jedi with the pointy head would be Tara Reid and Jar-Jar would be Ashlee Simpson. Wow, Star Wars really does explain the world.

(Don’t know who Jessica Simpson would be, maybe Count Dooku or someone like that. I’m more confused by her complete butchering of 9 to 5 at the Kennedy Center honors for Dolly Parton. Her explanation was that she was having wardrobe issues while singing off of cue cards. I find this completely unbelievable as it implies that Jessica knows how to read.)

Oh, and if you haven’t checked out Brit’s website yet (what do you mean you don’t have it bookmarked?) she gives her Christmas greeting and explanation for the past couple of weeks. Her public thanking of Victoria’s Secret just seems to be the most oft-kilter reference to a publicity nightmare that I’ve ever seen. Parody is good but when you become a parody of yourself that means you’re in trouble. The other thing is that she explains this as being the first time in two years that she has had the opportunity to go out. She hadn’t even had a chance to celebrate her birthday. Yeah, I mean, having two kids can really put a cramp into your nightlife. As Fitzgerald said, “The rich are different than you and I”, this being a prime example of it.

(Though Lindsay would also make a fine Zelda. I’m just saying…)

This is going to be an interesting little weekend for me. No college football at all. There is Duke-George Mason in basketball but that is not a matchup that has me setting the Tivo. Bears play on Monday night so my television schedule is wide open this weekend. Which means I really won’t have an excuse to hang out in my apartment and will thus need to go out, do some Christmas shopping, and see what its like out in the real world. It’s a frightening thought now that I consider it, moving from the digital world back to the analog realm. We’ll see what stories I have to tell at the end of it…

Going Bowling: Part Two

Continuing through the bowl schedule…

MPC Computers (nee Humanitarian) Bowl: Miami vs. Nevada: Historically, this has been my favorite bowl game. It is played in Boise, Idaho on the smurf turf. Smurf turf is blue Astroturf, which not only disconcerts the viewer but also (and I’m not making this up) causes birds to dive into the field thinking it is a lake, thereby littering the playing surface with bird carcasses. This always adds that little bit of edge that makes the game that much more exciting. It also happens to be an ACC tie-in game for the team that screwed up their season the most and this year it is Miami. Yes, the Canes have to leave South Florida to go to Boise and play on New Year’s Eve. In the words of the immortal Lamar Thomas “Hell to da naw.”

Chick-fil-A (nee Peach) Bowl: Georgia vs. Virginia Tech: Like most guys, I feel that everything involving relationships can be described using football analogies. This starts with the simple “She has a good jersey but a bad helmet” and can move on to the more advanced “Where’s the flag for pass interference?” and “I saw that she was playing a Tampa Two so I tried a six yard out pattern but the safety cheated up so I checked down to my secondary receiver but the line started to break down so I had to throw the ball away and bring on the punt team.” (E and Super are nodding their heads in agreement right now.)

My addition to the football lexicon was using bowl games to define the relative quality and availability of girls I was trying to ask out. So the Rose Bowl would be for a classic beauty that your mom would like, the Sugar Bowl would be a southern belle and the Orange Bowl would be that girl with a little too much makeup who just won’t shut up in the middle of a date. This was epitomized in the following quote “I could go out with [name redacted due to better judgment] but it would be like accepting a bid to the Humanitarian Bowl. Sure, I’d be a big favorite and guaranteed to score some points but at some point I’d have to admit that I’m playing on blue turf in December in Boise. On the other hand, I could try for [name redacted due to embarrassment], which would be like playing in the Peach Bowl. Yeah, I’ll be a pretty sizable underdog but damnit, at least I’m playing in January where it’s warm and who knows, I might just pull off the upset.”

(Two things that strike me when I look back at this. One, I ended up in a completely different bowl game. Hell, it was a completely different sport. Like I lined up for the opening kickoff and I was handed a broom and told that we were playing curling. Second, this whole exchange probably explains why many of my relationships have been measured with a stopwatch. And I can’t say that I disagree.)

Also, I need to note that they are opening a Chick-fil-A tomorrow on my way to and from work. Apparently, people are camped in the parking lot waiting for it to open. Seriously, they were a handful of tents this morning and this evening looked like Woodstock. I can somewhat understand camping out for a PS3 but we’re talking about a chicken sandwich here. There’s another store a few miles away that is open. Does fast food need to inspire camping?

Outback Bowl: Tennessee vs. Penn State: Remember, you can’t spell Outback without UT. And Joe Pa will be back on the sidelines for this game. I’d prefer if he’d come out on the field in one of those motorized scooters. Or a golf cart. Still, always good to see the old guy back out there and swearing at the refs.

Toyota Gator Bowl: West Virginia vs. Georgia Tech: Yeah, I’m not even going to touch this joke. From experience, avoiding Jacksonville is a healthy decision to make.

Rose Bowl presented by Citi: Michigan vs. USC: I’m hoping that both teams lose. It will make my life so much better if they do. Also, if you haven’t checked out Deadspin for the latest video of a USC cheerleader cheering while UCLA scores you really should. It just adds to the evidence that USC is the home of the best rocket science program in the country. (Personally, I just like that even from the video you can see the other cheerleaders turn to her and go, “Damnit Alison, how could you be so blonde?”)

International Bowl: Cincinnati vs. Western Michigan: Want to know where you need to travel to for an International Bowl? Toronto. I’m not sure that should count as international. You couldn’t consider yourself a world traveler if all you ever visited was Ontario. Though it is nice to get that added international flavor that Western Michigan brings to any occasion.

Allstate Sugar Bowl: Notre Dame vs. LSU: This is a great matchup for the city of New Orleans as the Irish faithful will fill up the hotel rooms and spend a great deal of money on Bourbon Street. Even better, the Irish fans will be back on Bourbon by halftime because this game is going to get ugly. Before my classmates go off on me, I’ve seen this story before. When my Illini won the Big 10 they played in the Sugar Bowl vs. LSU and the entire stadium was wearing purple and gold and Rohan Davie played like he was Johnny Unitas. I can see the same thing happening again. I don’t want it to, but the Irish will probably not have the speed to play with an insanely motivated Tigers team.

(Don’t know if I’ll head down for the game or not. It’s tough for me to turn down an opportunity to head down to Nola but I’ll probably be back in March anyway.)

Tostitos BCS Championship Game: Florida vs. Ohio State: Back in college one of my best friends was this guy named Pat Bradshaw. (I’ve included his name for no reason other than I’ve lost touch with him and I figure he’s the type of guy who would google his own name and stumble upon the blog.) Anyway, as we both prepared for graduation we applied to grad schools and he decided to go to Ohio State for his masters in biochemical engineering. I, on the other hand, accepted a teaching assistantship at Florida to work on my master’s in electrical engineering. That lasted for about three weeks until I got a job offer and decided that getting paid to work in a nuclear power plant was a better option than hanging out with coeds in Gainesville.

Sigh.

I still hold a special place for Florida in my heart and since I can’t cheer their basketball team due to that fat piece of crap Billy Donovan I just pull for the football team. So, even though I don’t think much of this Florida team I hope they win. Plus, this would mean that everyone would have one loss and we’ll be that much closer to having a playoff. Which would be good, other than we’d lose the whole “Brut by Faberge” experience.

Going Bowling: Part One

Well, it’s that time of year again. Time for me to break down the top bowl matchups so you know just how to spend the next month of your life in front of the television, especially now that How I Met Your Mother is in reruns. (As is my own life, but that’s a rant for another day.) As there are a million bowl games this year I’ll break this into two parts. First, the lesser bowls.

Pioneer Pure Vision Las Vegas Bowl: BYU vs. Oregon: In a rather stunning move, the strip clubs in Las Vegas have actually begun laying off employees in preparation for this game. However, since whatever happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, bars have been advised to stock up on O’Douls. The good money is that the most popular game in the casino this weekend will be the change machine.

R&L Carriers New Orleans Bowl: Rice vs. Troy: I am assuming that Troy is actually a school and not just one guy. Though to be honest, he is taking on Uncle Ben so it might be a closer matchup than originally anticipated.

Papajohns.com Bowl: South Florida vs. East Carolina: Winner will take on the winner of the West New Hampshire vs. North Wyoming to determine the best imaginary state school.


New Mexico Bowl: New Mexico vs. San Jose State: This is a rather impressive move by New Mexico, ensuring that it will make a bowl game by inventing one for itself. It’s the college football equivalent of naming your own kid the starting quarterback when you are the coach of the team. Do they also buy national championship rings for everyone on the team just so they’ll feel like winners?

Sheraton Hawaii Bowl: Arizona State vs. Hawaii: Well, if I went to school in Hawaii I wouldn’t leave the state either. Actually, there is a really good reason why Hawaii is in this game. The payout on this bowl is so low that any school that accepts a bid actually loses money by playing the game due to the cost of getting the team there and the fact that they never sell enough alumni tickets. That said, would you complain about flying to Hawaii to play in a meaningless bowl game?

Motor City Bowl: Middle Tennessee vs. Central Michigan: I’ve included this game just because both of these schools made bowl games and my Illini did not. How sad is that? My alma mater can’t even come close to dreaming of a bowl game yet Middle Tennessee gets to travel to Detroit and… you know, come to think of it, maybe it’s not that bad that we missed out on bowl season this year.

Texas Bowl: Rutgers vs. Kansas State: This used to be called the GalleryFurniture.com bowl so while they’ve improved on the name we’ve now lost the promotion of a website that was never heard of other than their promotion of this bowl. How off the radar is this game? It’s on the NFL Network, which can be viewed by upwards of dozen of households around the country. I’ll be cheering for Rutgers in this one, partly because they were a cool underdog team who just missed out on being in the Orange Bowl and partly because I hate Kansas State. Something about wearing purple uniforms and calling themselves Wildcats.

Brut Sun Bowl: Oregon State vs. Missouri: This is the best name for a bowl game since the heyday of the Poulan Weed Eater Independence Bowl and the Humanitarian Bowl. Yes, Missouri Tigers football brought to you by Brut by Faberge. Brut, it’s what you wear when you don’t want to smell entirely like ass but you don’t really feel like trying that hard either. I am going to be discussing this bowl in great detail with anyone I meet over the next month just so I can say “Brut….by Faberge” over and over again. (It doesn’t take much to keep me entertained).

Champs Sports Bowl: Purdue vs. Maryland: Purdue made a bowl game? How the hell did Purdue make a bowl game? Hadn’t they lost every game when they showed up in South Bend? They were one of the worst teams I saw all year and they made a bowl game? Man, now I’m really bummed about my Illini missing the bowls. And this one is in Orlando as well, so I would have had an excuse to go to Disney World. I mean, how could I miss out a chance to visit Tomorrowland where you can see what forty years ago people thought five years ago would be like.

That’s it for the first half. Coming up tomorrow: The wonders of smurf turf, what makes an International Bowl and why the Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl is a metaphor for life itself. Stay tuned.

Giving the store away...

Some flotsam and jetsam topics that weren’t addressed yesterday…

Topic #1: It was correctly pointed out that if I am going to start reading Shakespeare’s histories then I should read Richard II before the Henry plays since they occur in that order. I still need to make a decision on this. While Richard II would be the correct way of doing it, Henry IV features Falstaff and as a rule I can only read Shakespeare when it involves a drunk or a woman impersonating as a man or a case of mistaken identity involving twins. Falstaff gives me the first and possibly the second, depending on how drunk he is at the time. Basically, I have to decide if the Henriad is like the Godfather trilogy or like Star Wars. Even if it is like Star Wars, getting Jar Jar out of the way early might not be a bad thing.

Topic #2: Ok, I really do need to write about the Brittney Spears upskirt pictures from last week. There’s just no way I can stay in good standing as a pop culture critic without addressing this issue. (No, I’m not going to post the pictures. They are easy to find on your own.) First of all, it’s kind of difficult to call these pictures upskirts. It’s more like “up a rather large belt”. This is why it is so obviously a publicity ploy. I mean, you are being hounded by the paparazzi so you go out in the shortest skirt possible, don’t wear any underwear and get out of the car by spreading your legs wide right in front of the guy with the zoom lens. Yeah, not subtle at all.

(The best part about the pictures are the expression on Paris Hilton’s face. She looks kind of like Yoda when Luke first learned to levitate the rocks. Actually, Paris looks a lot more like Yoda than I would like to admit. Maybe this is how she is escaping the clone army by appearing to be as dumb as possible. So I guess that would make Brittney her Padwan and Lindsay Mace Windu.)

Anyway, this is a huge mistake for Brittney and is going to end up costing her millions. Not because it is going to ruin her teeny-bopper image. That was lost a long time ago. Two kids will do that to you. No, what’s dumb about this is she gave this all away for free. Let’s be honest, no one gives a damn about her for her music or her dancing. The attraction is that she was a vaguely attractive popstar. Put Brit on the cover of Playboy and it would sell a ton of issues. Now the thrill is gone (as well as the opportunity for some much needed airbrushing). If you’re going to go out and whore yourself, you might as well go to the highest bidder.

Topic #3: I’ve added this to my links on the right but I have to mention it here. Mainly because this might be the entire reason the internet was invented. About two weeks ago my choice for the best band on the planet (The Frames) performed a concert at this club in the Netherlands on a Tuesday night. It was taped and the entire thing is available as a streaming video stream. It’s just what this club does for bands that come to town and it is the smartest thing I’ve heard of in years. Free publicity, a concert film that you could later sell as a DVD, all at no cost to the band. And this show by The Frames is just insane. Just click on Seven Day Mile or People Get Ready or Revelate and you’ll understand what I am talking about.

Pop culture musings

Some thoughts on what I saw on television over the weekend…

1) The Danny DeVito drunk on The View incident

So, apparently Danny DeVito showed up drunk on the set of The View last week, due to a very late night drinking with George Clooney. Now, let’s ignore how those two ended up drinking together (I’m just going to assume that Clooney is a really big fan of Throw Momma from the Train). I bet I can accurately recreate the conversation that they had the night before.

Clooney: Aw come on Danny, stay for one more drink.
DeVito: No, I got to get home to the wife.
Clooney: Dude, you’re married to Rhea Pearlman.
DeVito: You’re right. Let’s do a couple of shots.
(A little bit later)
DeVito: Man, I got to get going…
Clooney: Why?
DeVito: You know, I just got to get going.
Clooney: No, I want you to tell me one good reason why you feel that there is a better option for you right now than being in this bar.
DeVito: Well, I got to be up early in the morning to do an interview on The View.
Clooney: Seriously?
DeVito: Yeah, you know, promote the movie and all that.
Clooney: So, you’re telling me that you want to go home just so you can see Rosie O’Donnell in the morning?
DeVito: What am I saying? Break out the Jager.

To be honest, that isn’t much difference than every other conversation that I ever had at the Backer.

2) A commercial for the “World famous KFC bowls”

There are many things that have made me concerned for the planet. Deforestation, the continual increase in the concrete to grass ratio and the fact that there has been a great deal of focus in the news media regarding Brittney Spears decisions in the underwear department (which is a post in its own right). But the fact that the KFC bowls can now be described as world famous may just put me over the edge. Any menu item that is created by taking four other menu items, tossing them in a bowl and covering them with gravy does not deserve to be world famous. It should probably be banned by UN decrees.

3) Dr. Pepper promoting its 23 flavors

First, I want to figure out how they determined that there are 23 flavors. Flavors just don’t seem like something that you can easily count. Is this based on a complicated chemical analysis or just some guy sitting in an office thinking up adjectives to describe Dr. Pepper. If it is that then just what are those last few flavors because let’s admit it, we’re talking about one of the lesser colas. I’m guessing those last three flavors are “battery acid”, “despair”, and “you know the way you retch when you walk past an overflowing garbage can on a really hot day? Yeah, Dr. Pepper kind of tastes like that.”

The five random CDs for the week:
1) Death Plan for Cutie “Plans”
2) Cowboy Junkies “Open”
3) Freakwater “Feels Like the Third Time”
4) Alejandro Escovedo “With These Hands”
5) Josh Rouse “Subtitulo”

More Infrequently Asked Questions

Time to dip into the Infrequently Asked Questions file…

Question: What is the Shakespeare project and why does it become important in December?

Answer: The Shakespeare project is my quest to a) read every Shakespeare play and b) read one Shakespeare play a year. This has been going on basically since I was thirteen years old and has taken on a life of its own. Here is the list so far

The Comedy of Errors (the first play I ever read)
Romeo and Juliet
The Merchant of Venice
Julius Caesar
Hamlet
Macbeth
King Lear
Richard III
Othello
As You Like It
Measure For Measure
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Much Ado About Nothing
The Taming of the Shrew
The Tempest
Twelfth Night
The Merry Wives of Windsor
Cymbeline
The Winter’s Tale
Titus Andronicus

(This list isn’t meant to make me sound smart. It’s honestly the first time I’ve listed them all and I needed it for reference.)

Admittedly, only four of these were read for a class and the rest were read with varying degrees of understanding. For example I really need to reread King Lear, Macbeth and Richard III because all I remember about them is that one had a daughter named Cordelia, one had a lot of people named Mac in it and one involved either a whore or a horse, I can never remember which. But over time I’ve been able to learn how to read Shakespeare and I have to say that I do enjoy it.

This year I’ll be reading Henry IV Part I as I think I’ve gone through all of the comedies and now will start to tackle the histories. It’s become part of the tradition that I read Shakespeare in December partly due to the fact that I wait until the end of the year to meet this goal and partly because its seems kind of poetic to curl up on a cold December night and read the greatest playwright’s works. See, even a cynical bastard like me has a soft side.

Question: Speaking of cold winter nights, what were you listening to while driving through a snowstorm?

Answer: Jack Johnson and Nina Simone. Jack Johnson is probably not recommended as it is entirely about surfing and in this instance seems to be an entire album made to remind you that you are an idiot for living in the Midwest. (By the way, Brushfire Fairytales has not aged well. That’s not a shot at Jack because I love his stuff. It’s just that you can see how much he has improved over time. He might be one of the few people where I prefer his later work.) Listening to Nina though while watching people spin in the snow is a wonder. Cool jazz for a cool night.

Question: If, oh who am I kidding, when you build your time machine where is the first place you are going to go?

Answer: For the longest time the answer to this question was that I would go back in time to meet Isaac Newton and then kick his ass for inventing calculus and making my life a living hell in college. Though that would probably invalidate the entire universe so there are some risks, though I could totally take him in a fight. However, I read something today that made me really want to visit the Australian outback 50,000 years ago. Apparently at that time there was all of this mega-fauna roaming around like eight foot tall kangaroos and wombats the size of cars.

I don’t know about you, but I think an eight foot tall kangaroo would be the coolest thing ever. Could you imagine a herd of those guys hopping past you. Were talking Yao Ming with good hops here. Your reaction would be “Aw, aren’t they cute…oh my Science they’re headed this way. Run for your life.” Plus, I just like the idea that wombats exist, and car sized ones would be like really furry cattle. Or buffalo with a softer side.

My Own Private Cubicle

(I know I set a “Don’t talk about work” rule and this is the third day in a row where work will play a part. It’s more of a “Don’t talk about what I do, who I work for or who I work with” rule.)

I have a very strange seating arrangement at work. I am the only person from my department on my wing of the building. Honestly, every other person on this side of the floor reports to a different VP than I do. I ended up here because a year ago there was an empty cube and this is where I was placed. It leaves me on a little island in my own little self-contained workgroup. I love it, they just leave me in my little corner and let me be a subtle genius. It’s pretty cool.

There are some drawbacks, though. See, the weather started turning bad today and at three I started to notice a lot of people leaving work. I just figured that it was a case of people being too scared to drive in sleet and using it as an excuse to get out of work and put my headphones back on and went back to my spreadsheet. When I left at five I realized that my car was basically the only one in the parking lot. It was like a ghost town. It then dawned on me that they may have announced to the entire campus that they should go home early and I wasn’t notified about it. Not sure if I am proud of that or rather disturbed.

Still, the drive home was easy and it only took me five or ten minutes longer than it usually does. Tomorrow should be worse with the first real snow of the season but I like snow. It will make for a very interesting commute, though.

The other thing about the rather rough conditions this evening is that it meant that no one came out for trivia tonight. There were a grand total of five teams playing so of course this is the night that I am on fire answering a ton of questions right. We won, which is something that we haven’t done in ages at the Flea Market, but it almost doesn’t count. And I am still pissed about missing a Family Guy question (I thought James Woods was the name of the junior high as opposed to the high school). But I did know that Bill Clinton gave Monica Lewinsky “Leaves of Grass” to read, which should count for something.

And I don’t know if I’ll believe it until I see it but apparently in the KC magazine it states that trivia at the Flea Market is the in thing to do if you are single. This astounds me. First of all, this would make me cutting edge. Second, I’ve been playing there for six months and not only have I not hooked up with anyone but I can’t even imagine a situation where that would even have been feasible. Finally, does this mean that I have entered a world where my knowledge of pro wrestling and video games is considered to be attractive? Like maybe there are women coming to these games going, “You know what I look for in a husband? Someone who can identify the theme song to The Tick. And who can tell me what college team plays at Beaver Stadium.” Every time I think I’ve figured out this world I hear something like this and can’t figure out if I’m the coolest guy on the planet or the biggest loser or that I’m potentially both at the same time.

Life, Liberty and Enchiladas

My biggest challenge in writing a novel: apparently it is bad form to write a novel in bullet point form.

Topic # 1: Like probably ninety percent of the people who read this blog, I drive past a Taco Bell on the way to work every morning. I’ve noticed recently that they fly flags over the Taco Bell. Not the American flag or the Kansas flag (which features wheat and the state motto “Darwin was a moron”). No, they are flying the tricolors of Taco Bell Nation. I am really concerned about this as it leads to the possibility of all of the Taco Bells of the world joining up and declaring themselves a sovereign land of five and only five ingredients. They would probably have one of the largest militaries in the world, though you’d only have to wait until they turned thirty and started to suffer weekly heart attacks to defeat them.

Topic # 2: To my neverending amazement, Pandora alternately understands my musical tastes and misses by such a margin that it disturbs me. On the positive side, it intuitively knew that I needed to listen to Matthew Sweet today. However, it also wanted me to listen to Shakira and this scares me. I don’t want to listen to Shakira, I don’t want to know what Shakira sounds like and I don’t know how anything in my playlist would lead you to think that Shakira would be up my alley. It’s a great way to do streaming radio, if only for the WTF moments that arise.

Topic # 3: Oh, and my new notebook complaint related to Pandora. My new laptop has a digital volume control meaning that the sound is either off or really, really loud. The old one I could control so that I could wear headphones but still hear everything going on behind me. Now, it’s just me and the music and even that is too loud. This isn’t an item I can officially complain about though. Can’t really tell your boss that you don’t like your new laptop because it isn’t as good at playing CDs as the old one.

Topic # 4: Has anyone else noticed the new commercials for Mel Gibson’s “Apocalyptico”? They are actually promoting it by showing Mel and having him talk about the film. Given that he is persona non grata in Hollywood right now I wonder if this means that even the voice over guy they use for every trailer won’t work for him. When the “In a world…” guy doesn’t even take the paycheck, you’re in trouble. Plus, I don’t know how you promote a film about a pre-Columbian civilization performed in dead languages with subtitles. Maybe the tagline could be “Want to have other people think you are intelligent and arty? Watch this film. Or, at least realize that the seats are really comfy and the theater is air conditioned so you can take a nice nap. Or you could act like a teenager and make out during the film. Not like anyone is going to quiz you on plot details or anything.”

Topic # 5: I know I spent much of last week ranting about how How I Met Your Mother was stealing aspects of my life for their plot lines. Not that I want to continue that train of thought but Marshall was wearing a Notre Dame t-shirt for no reason whatsoever last night. I’m just saying…

Another couple lost...

There are a couple of things that you don’t want to see when you walk into your cubicle on a Monday morning. Security guards waiting outside your desk is one of them. Seeing the blue screen of death on your laptop is another. I had the latter happen to me today (though I have actually seen the former happen at various points in my career). Yes, I go away for the weekend and my laptop at work decided to give up the ghost. We were able to save the information but I was forced to upgrade to a new laptop. It’s like an early Christmas present.

Or at least it is for the most part. It’s nice having a bright screen that is actually larger than a piece of paper and the space bar on this one actually works for a change but it is still tough getting used to a new machine. As you could guess, I spend a lot of time at my computer and not only does every icon need to be in a particular spot on the screen for me to be happy I also need the keyboard to feel a certain way. And that’s a bit of an issue right now.

See, I never learned how to properly type. Never took a course and my hands are constantly in the wrong positions. However, I’ve memorized the keyboard and can type at a really good speed until my hands cramp up. This means that a new laptop has me hitting the caps lock key every five seconds because it is where the A key used to be. It’s like I should change my out of office message to “Expect productivity declines until my brain rewires itself.” Yeah, this is what I deal with at the office on a fairly regular basis.

The other big news story of the day is clearly the Pamela Anderson-Kid Rock divorce. Coming on the heels of the Reese-Ryan divorce, the Brit-K-Fed divorce and the impending Tom-Katie divorce (we’re going to rescue you Katie, just stay strong) this is really beginning to make me question the strength of relationships in Hollywood. There should be like a federal inquiry or something on this. I mean, who could ever imagine Kid Rock and Pam breaking up? Or were smart enough to take the under?

(Also, can someone explain the attractiveness of Pamela Anderson to me? This has bugged me for a decade now. I have never understood what made guys go nuts for her. She has enough plastic in her that if you held her next to an open flame she’d melt, she’s got absolutely no intelligence, and I don’t even think she has that pretty of a face. Is the interest in the injections and nothing else? And isn’t that kind of sad?)

Holiday Recap

You know, it’s kind of odd that on the night of a major holiday that I don’t spend a page writing about the meaningfulness (or commercialization) of the event. Instead I write about old Nirvana songs. Sadly, that is probably a more genuine feeling from me than if I wrote about a group of people who for some reason thought that wearing belt buckles on their hats was a very wise fashion choice. It’s a bad sign when you are thrown out of England for “not being cool enough.”

It was a pretty calm holiday. It came down to traveling to visit my family or dinner at Chili’s and while it is the place where fun and family meet, there is something about having my Thanksgiving dinner served with an inordinate amount of flair that seems rather unappetizing. It was really good to get home and see everyone for a few days. Since I moved out here that has been a rarer and rarer occurrence and I’ve learned to appreciate the times I do get to just relax with my family. Plus, in what must be the first time ever, both of my flights were on time and I had only minor waits to pick up my luggage. I’m now officially dreading my next flight because it is going to have to be a disaster just to even things out.

(Well, maybe the ND game was the disaster that evened things out. Yeesh, that was not fun to watch. We always seem to be about a step slower than those teams, which is a bit of an issue for our defensive backs. I was actually at the game the last time we beat USC and at the time it really didn’t feel like that big of a deal. Maybe I should have realized that we needed to savor the moment at the time.)

And, in what should come as a surprise to no one, I pretty much spent the entire weekend avoiding shopping malls. I can not understand people who will camp outside for Black Friday sales. Nintendo Wii debuts, that I can see waiting for due to its unrivaled awesomeness. But to get a discount on a DVD player at Target? Is that worth losing sleep over? That said, I just do not have the mindset for shopping in those environments. I walk into a mall with a gameplan, complete with primary and secondary objectives. If a store does not contain one of the items that I require I will not even glance at it as I going hurrying past. Shopping isn’t meant to be fun, it is time that should be minimized at all costs.

Well, unless you are shopping for electronics. In that case, you really need to test out every system before you determine the best one. And music stores don’t count because until you go through every rack you can’t be certain what gems are hidden. But that’s not shopping, that’s enjoying life.

Time to readjust to life in an office. It was so nice not having to set an alarm for a few days.

The five random CDs of the week:
1) Jack Johnson “Brushfire Fairytales”
2) Nina Simone “At the Village Gate”
3) Michael McDermott “Bourbon Blue”
4) Paul Burch and the WPA Ballclub “Blue Notes”
5) Robbie Fulks “Georgia Hard”

The choice is yours, don't delay

A few days ago I was watching television and came across something that tied into one of my major musical tenets. Within a few hours of each other I watched a Classic Albums documentary on Nirvana’s “Nevermind” and I then watched the full video for “Come As You Are”. This is really important to me because most people claim that “Smells Like Teen Spirit” is the song that ended hair metal but I don’t believe that it is true. It hurt it, definitely, had hair metal on the ropes but it is “Come As You Are” that put hair metal away for good.

It’s a little difficult to imagine what the music world was like fifteen years ago. It was a time when Skid Row was on the cover of every music mag and we weren’t that far removed from Wilson Phillips and Nelson ruling the charts. Sure, you also had Metallica and Guns N Roses as the two biggest bands on the planet but for the most part, music still seemed to be glam and style over substance. There was an underground scene and everyone had heard Losing My Religion more times than they could remember but it still seemed to be separate from everything else.

That’s what Nirvana broke into but to be honest, from Smells Like Teen Spirit you didn’t know if they were going to be a huge band or just another one hit wonder. It was different and unique but that is not unusual in music. So were the Crash Test Dummies and no one gave a damn about them before or since. And that’s the way I view Smells Like Teen Spirit, it was a warning shot and an indication of a different type of musical movement beginning. But it wasn’t what broke everything.

That’s where the opening bass line of Come As You Are comes in. That song and video were so completely opposite of what you would see from Motley Crue or Bon Jovi that it forced you to wonder what it all meant. You had the band playing behind a wall of water so that you could never quite make out what they looked like, as opposed to being able to name the brand of lipstick the band members were wearing. There were images of cells and babies, which screamed that this was about a new form of music rather than being mainly about strippers (which is what every third hair metal song was about). There was the dog with the satellite dish over its head that symbolized, ok, I don’t have a freaking clue what it was supposed to mean. Other than it and the image of Kurt swinging from the chandelier tended to stay with you for a very long time.

But it’s the final shot, the last thing you see as the guitar feedback fades, that said this is a different world now. The camera seems to be lying on a lawn with the band looking at it. And slowly, so slowly, Kurt leans forward to kiss the lens. Again, I don’t know if I can explain how different this was than everything else you would see on MTV. We weren’t that far removed from Home Sweet Home ruling the nightly request countdown for a year. Or Warrant’s Cherry Pie video, which involved a fire truck, pastries and probably something else that I’m forgetting. None of it was about showing vulnerability but that is what Nirvana did in those few seconds. Everyone knew that they could rock, hell, a lot of people considered them to be a metal band in the beginning., but it’s that one moment that changed everything.

It’s hard to realize that we are fifteen years removed from my first seeing that video. It makes you wonder if what you’ve done in the meantime has been worthwhile. But more than that, I wonder if I’ll ever be able to pinpoint a time when I’ve seen a culture change due to something as simple as a song.

Voices on the internet

The cover article for this month’s Wired magazine is about a subject that I’ve been thinking about over the past couple of days. It focuses on the internet phenomenon of Lonelygirl15, which is probably the first episodic web broadcast to really break big. Sure, there are some pod casts that had success but these videos are the first buzz worthy mentions in the new internet paradigm. People have given a lot of reasons for its success: interesting writing, a blurring between fiction and reality, or its interactive nature. All of those hold some truth but in the end I think there is one huge reason that people overlook: Lonelygirl15 looks like someone you would really want to date.

I know that sounds really bad, almost chauvinistic. Like the only reason these guys have any buzz is that they found this exotic looking 19 year old Australian girl to act in front of a webcam. That’s not my point. If you had Nicole Kidman doing this it wouldn’t be interesting at all. She’s incredibly beautiful but is so beautiful and famous that she doesn’t really exist as a human being. What would you say if you walked into a room and Nicole Kidman was there? What would your reaction be? It probably wouldn’t be any different than if you discovered the Easter Bunny or the Tooth Fairy or the Soul Cake Tuesday Duck. But people like Jessica Rose (the actress behind all of this) have a quality that just makes you want to know them and even more, give you the impression that if you ran into her at a bar that you’d be able to hit it off.

See, modern entertainment has had a strange evolution over the last hundred years. It started off as pure escapism: here is what life could be like if you weren’t dealing with the dust bowl or random bear attacks. There was no connection to reality, everything was just a soundstage backdrop of a perfect world. Over the years that false front still exists its just that we now all believe that our lives are supposed to mirror what we see on television and in the movies. We want the perfect house and the perfect smile and love at first sight because damnit, if it can happen to Rob Schneider in a movie why can’t it happen to me in real life?

So we look to entertainment now to escape a life that isn’t as glamorous as we dream it to be as well as to give us hope that maybe there is a chance for us after all. So when this girl starts posting videos to YouTube and you see that she is cute and interesting and smart you become intrigued. Maybe you check out her MySpace page. Maybe you send her an email. And she responds and you think that who knows, maybe this will be the one moment in your life where you find yourself living a movie. And it’s all because of the girl with the interesting eyebrows.

To me, that’s the future of entertainment. We really don’t want to watch beautiful people living lives that we can’t imagine anymore. There’s no joy in watching Paris Hilton either as a person or a fictional character. To be honest, it’s like watching a National Geographic special on kangaroos: fascinating at a distance but having absolutely no relevance on my life. But things like a good reality show or Ted’s journey for love in HIMYM tend to give you hope that the world is a little less plastic than we fear. That’s what we should learn from Lonelygirl15. We’re not looking to the internet to create a new form of entertainment. Were looking for someone out there in the world who will listen.

Have a happy Thanksgiving everyone.

Technology Friviolity

A correction on a post from last week: As I was informed by the formidable trivia team of Hot Dog Water, I was incorrect in my belief that the video for Asia’s classic “Heat of the Moment” had this vague Raiders of the Lost Ark theme. That song’s video consisted of a heck of a lot of video monitors showing band related images. The Asia song I was thinking of was “Don’t Cry”, whose video does actually contain the band members falling into quicksand, bursting into flames and getting chained to walls. I was also wrong in the involvement of guitars but I think that is due to the last trap being a table similar to the one a guitar is placed on in Def Leppard’s “Rock of Ages” and the one that a Wilson sister from Heart (the one married to Cameron Crowe, not the one only filmed from the neck up) emerges from in a video as if she was poured into a mold.

And yes, I spent a heck of a lot of time on YouTube today determining these facts. I’m not sure what fact is more disturbing here. That I, someone with a number of degrees and believed by many people to contain actual intelligence, had the major focus of his life being searching out clips of nearly twenty five year old Asia videos or that someone a) recorded those videos on a tape, b) held on to that tape for two decades and c) decided to upload it to a website. Somehow I feel that this isn’t the best use of the internet. Coolest, yes, but maybe not the best.

Had this thought cross my mind as I was racing through Best Buy this morning to pick up my copy of How I Met Your Mother on DVD. Given the amount of free publicity I’ve given that show over the past year you’d think I’d get a copy of it gratis. Don’t get me wrong, it’s my favorite show on tv by a long shot (especially since the Simpson’s has decided to go into full on suck mode) but don’t I deserve something for being such a proselytizer of the show’s awesomeness? Of course, I bought a copy anyway and am now going through all of the commentary tracks waiting for them to say something like, “People keep on asking us where we get the ideas for the episodes. Well, there’s this guy in Kansas City…”

As you can tell, this has been a day for a lot of great thinking on my part. (Seriously, someone posted Asia videos on YouTube. I want to know why. Sure, it was of great benefit to me but who the hell kept a copy of those for two decades?) I do want to mention one idea that has been floating through my mind recently that would be good to discuss. I was given the suggestion recently that instead of writing a novel maybe I should write a collection of pieces in the manner of David Sedaris.

It’s a really good suggestion for a number of reasons. First, while I’ve been writing a lot I haven’t actively been writing fiction for five years and haven’t been writing long-form fiction for more like eight. All of my focus over the past few years has been on these shorter pieces. Plus, I think that is where my strength lies. I don’t know if I could build a plot that holds up over two hundred pages. Finally, I’ve been reading a lot of things in the Sedaris mold like Sarah Vowell and Chuck Klostermann so I think I know how to do that style.

So while I haven’t officially decided that is what I’m going to do next year I’m leaning in that direction. It will be a collection of fiction and memoir and pop culture analysis, hopefully with one thread that connects all of it together. I’ll probably expand some blog entries and add a few stories that have never made it in here for various reasons. I’m still open to suggestions or ideas. But mainly I think this might be the best way for me to move towards writing that one major work I feel that I have in me.

My Life is a Sitcom

Ok, I am now officially scared.

I knew when I started the blog two years ago that I was taking certain risks. I might embarrass myself, I could get myself fired, I could mistakenly tell a girl the link to the blog and have her find out way too much about me and hence, stop returning my calls. But in the cost benefit equation that is my life I figured that I could take that chance. I certainly never expected the following.

I am now convinced that one of the writers on How I Met Your Mother reads this blog.

Sure, I had an inkling when Ted got drunk on “Red Dragon” shots and had people writing on his arms in marker. There’s the whole “friends who are from Minnesota and a lawyer” bit. Heck, an episode revolved around “going to a dating service and having the number of perfect mates calculated for you”. But tonight is the clincher. Tonight we had a discussion on getting married at the Mall of America.

Which is what I wrote about here on June 26, including the requisite Orange Julius joke. Check the archives.

Look, I’m not asking for much (a signed photo of Allyson Hannigan would be nice). I find it rather funny to have the camera crew fliming my life for material. But really, if you want me to write for the show all you have to do is ask. I’m sure that I have a few Backer stories that could use a sitcom treatment. Plus, I can’t be the worst sitcom writer in the world. I think the trained manatees can beat the guys who write “According to Jim.”

Tonight’s episode was classic, though. Just the entire slap bet had me rolling with laughter. And yes, I’ll be picking up the first season DVD set tomorrow (thought about camping out for it, hey, it got all those PS3 guys on TV). I haven’t hit their MySpace page yet, though I should just so I could add a friend. Yes, if you have a page, please feel free to send me a friend request. It’s what my life has come to, begging for MySpace friends. It would probably help if I logged in more than once a month, though.

(I’ll still stand behind my belief that MySpace has jumped the shark. It’s not because I have a page or that television shows have pages. It’s because Chili’s listed their MySpace page on one of their commercials. How can you be hip and underground when Chili’s is using you for advertising? And who would have Chili’s listed in their Top 8? I can understand being devoted to a band, but who the hell dedicates their life to where they buy overprice potato skins?)

Last note: I can’t believe that they’ve cancelled the O.J. interview and book. Not because I thought it was a good idea, I was pretty firmly in the disgusting and disgraceful camp. I really want to understand how O.J. could go on the air saying, “Well, here’s how I would have killed the mother of my children.” But mainly I’m stunned by the fact that Fox changed their mind under the auspices of doing something morally right. It’s like, “That show about bears mauling passing by was cool and all, but this might just be a little too much.”